Chinese phone maker ZTE said it is in talks with Sprint Nextel about supplying the number three US mobile service with a range of handsets for a high-speed wireless service it is planning, based on WiMax.
"The negotiations are going successfully," Xiong Hui, a marketing VP for ZTE's handset division said, through a translator in an interview with Reuters at the Mobile World Congress.
Sprint has said it would offer services based on WiMax in the coming months. The company has been criticised for its plans to spend $5 billion by 2010 on a network based on a relatively new technology.
ZTE is a relatively small player in the mobile phone market, but it has been growing rapidly in the last few years by offering low-cost phones. So far, it has a very small presence in the US market. It recently announced it would sell a device at low cost service provider MetroPCS Communications.
Hui, who declined to comment further on the Sprint talks, said that the US market is key to ZTE's plans to expand beyond China, its biggest market.
"Our target market is the global market," he said. "The US market is a very important market for us."
It aims to increase its device sales to more than 50 million units in 2008 from about 30 million in 2007, including wireless data cards and phones, he said.
Hui said the company aims to be one of the world's top five mobile vendors in the next three years.
The market is currently led by Nokia Oyj, which shipped 133.5 million handsets in the fourth quarter alone.
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